Endurance Charges Overpowered?

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Zupan wrote:

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Anthian wrote:

can you actually get 9 endurance charges?
i can only find 3 on the passive tree and 3 standard making that only 6.

am i missing something?

Merciless bandit quest can net 1. Unique ring gives 1 endurance charge, so 2 of those.

OHHH!!!
-__-" stupid me, thanks for the info

This makes me think: maybe I should pick a skillpoint as the Merciless bandit reward on my rather new melee marauder - regardless of how useful endurance charges are right now I think that if it gets changed my character would suffer. It is already a big pain to keep them up, especially if playing solo. Not to mention that picking a skillpoint would enable me to switch to another type of build at a much later level using orbs of regret.

The design of them just feels odd - the resistances you gain seem pointless, because you should be capped on resists anyway, as you can't always expect to have all 6 of your endurance charges up. And if you take that into account and only go for 50 of your max 80 resists you'd be taking over twice the amount of elemental damage that you would without that part. This means that the elemental resistance part feels incredibly odd and out of place.

The physical reduction on it is great, but I find it to be rather difficult to keep them up.

Perhaps enduring cry could be made into a melee support gem instead? That you put on an ability and it will generate charges based on some kind of usage of those melee skills. And the skilltree endurance charges could be replaced with something like a pseudo energy shield that would shield you for a set amount of damage taken or until the buff runs out.

I mean, it's rather clear that endurance charges are what make meleeing really possible at higher levels because it's very difficult to try to compete in just armor when you can get iron skin granites that get affected by all your armor passives. When you're sitting at 3.5k armor and pop a granite and get 22k it makes you wonder why you're using armor on your gear at all. So I don't see why endurance charges being tied to melee abilities would be a bad choice.

1) Endurance Charges should calculate their mitigation before armour calculation.
2) Armour coefficient should be changed to 8, from 12.

Sample 1: 12000 armour, 1000 damage, 9 charges.
Current: Charges block 450, armour blocks 500. Total damage 50.
After: Charges block 450. Armour calculates against 550, blocks 402. Total damage 148.

Sample 2: 12000 armour, 1000 damage, 4 charges.
Current: Charges block 200, armour blocks 500. Total damage 300.
After: Charges block 200. Armour calculates against 800, blocks 521. Total damage 279.

Sample 3: 12000 armour, 1000 damage, 0 charges.
Current: Armour blocks 500. Total damage 500.
After: Armour block 600. Total damage 400.

Sample 4: 12000 armour, 10000 damage, 9 charges.
Current: Charges block 4500, armour blocks 909. Total damage 4591.
After: Charges block 4500. Armour calculates against 5500, blocks 1179. Total damage 4321.

Sample 5: 12000 armour, 10000 damage, 4 charges.
Current: Charges block 2000, armour blocks 909. Total damage 7091.
After: Charges block 2000. Armour calculates against 8000, blocks 1263. Total damage 6737.

Sample 6: 12000 armour, 10000 damage, 0 charges.
Current: Armour blocks 909. Total damage 9091.
After: Armour blocks 1179. Total damage 8821.

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Zakaluka wrote:

Having spent a long time with armour and understanding how it scales very well,

The what what? Armour scaling is the worst piece of math ever in this game. The higher the hit, the lower % your armour reduces. What's the point of armour then if it can't take spike damage? Even with 9 Endurance charges, you're hardly invincible. It's the only way a proper melee character can even survive. LS and GS are NOT melee skills.

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linkstatic wrote:

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Zakaluka wrote:

Having spent a long time with armour and understanding how it scales very well,

The what what? Armour scaling is the worst piece of math ever in this game. The higher the hit, the lower % your armour reduces. What's the point of armour then if it can't take spike damage? Even with 9 Endurance charges, you're hardly invincible. It's the only way a proper melee character can even survive. LS and GS are NOT melee skills.

He's saying he understands the scaling of armor (and very well at that), not that armor scales very well. XD

so, atm without these charges that are A) hard to keep up and B) difficult to attain the higher numbers of and C) the only thing that makes melee viable atm

you want to make that less viable

so you want endgame to be Ranged or go home?

its bad enough that melee is forced to spec so tanky just to be played.

I see some posters post how they want armor redone so those at least have some evidence of sense.

the rest of you /shame

In my opinion - swapping endurance charges for armor would be a horrible solution. This would make melee even more gear dependent. The goal of this kind of game should not be "who has the best gear wins".

I have no problem with endurance charges. Sure, it's annoying to keep them up all the time, but the alternative is farm for days before advancing.

The day that endurance charges gets removed/nerfed is the day that melee is no longer feasible without starting another character first.

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w01fe01 wrote:

so, atm without these charges that are A) hard to keep up and B) difficult to attain the higher numbers of and C) the only thing that makes melee viable atm

you want to make that less viable

so you want endgame to be Ranged or go home?

its bad enough that melee is forced to spec so tanky just to be played.

I see some posters post how they want armor redone so those at least have some evidence of sense.

the rest of you /shame

If you read the thread, you'd realize most of the discussion is centered around distributing a lot of the power from endurance charges back into armor for physical mitigation.

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koticgood wrote:

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w01fe01 wrote:

so, atm without these charges that are A) hard to keep up and B) difficult to attain the higher numbers of and C) the only thing that makes melee viable atm

you want to make that less viable

so you want endgame to be Ranged or go home?

its bad enough that melee is forced to spec so tanky just to be played.

I see some posters post how they want armor redone so those at least have some evidence of sense.

the rest of you /shame

If you read the thread, you'd realize most of the discussion is centered around distributing a lot of the power from endurance charges back into armor for physical mitigation.

if you read my post you would of saw where i typed "I see some posters post how they want armor redone so those at least have some evidence of sense"

which was directly applying to said posters. :)

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linkstatic wrote:

Armour scaling is the worst piece of math ever in this game. The higher the hit, the lower % your armour reduces.

While you have your basic facts straight, you're putting them together in a way I really don't agree with.

You're only looking at one axis: damage intake. That also happens to be the axis that doesn't progress in any meaningful way, and which you have no direct control over. In that sense you're looking at armour scaling in the least useful way. Scrotie's interpretation (which I also don't particularly agree with - it's more accurate for a low level playthrough, but not representative at endgame) is more useful than this one.

If you limit yourself to the axis that you do progress along consistently (and much more than linearly, I might add) - namely, armour rating - your reduction benefit is a hyperbolic increasing trend against rating.

Once you're in/around the endgame, you bounce back and forth on the damage axis, and keep going up on the rating axis. So armour gives you hyperbolic increasing gains on effective health, as long as you have endurance charges.

This idea that armour is worth less and less as you progress is rubbish. A/D stays constant at any desired percent reduction. That is, you only need to improve your total armour rating in proportion to your level (directly proportional). But then, this: base armour rating values on white pieces of gear already progress proportional to level. Rolled with mods they progress parabolically (possibly more than parabolically, because flat armour mods improve more than linearly vs level). Mob damage progresses linearly. Combine all the related rates you still get increasing returns on armour, not diminishing returns.

armour does not suffer from diminishing returns.

... But whether or not to have endurance charges is a non-choice. The real decision is how many you're willing to squeeze into your build. 5 is a bare minimum, 6-7 is much more reasonable. Running around with 7 endurance charges and then stacking armour on top of it, you'll change your mind about how effective armour is. Armour DR merely adds to endurance DR, but if you evaluate the effects in terms of EH, a reasonable number endurance charges can multiply your EH gain from armour by a factor of 5, back when 7 was the max reasonable number. Now since that max is higher, probably by a factor of 6 or 7.

They are far too necessary. And now that we've gone way off track, I'll state my main point again: it'd be okay for the armour budget to be higher than the evasion budget. Add something more to the armour budget, cut 1% from the value of an endurance charge. Flatten out armour scaling, make it more valuable at low values and less valuable per point at high values; while holding the reduction ceiling vs rating in the same place. 9 endurance at 5% per has an obscene effect on the reduction/EH curve.